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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

From 0 to Ten Million in a little more than a year

I’ve heard this story before but didn’t understand the details until I read about it this morning in Hybrid Moms magazine. Sheri Schmelzer’s daughter had a pair of Crocs, and she added some ornaments to the shoes, showed them to her husband, her hubby thought it was a genius idea. They took out a home equity loan and began buying things at craft stores and pasting them onto cufflinks, making the ornaments by hand in their basement. The Schmelzers launched a website in August 2005 for Jibbitz. Almost immediately they found success, receiving hundreds of orders a day. The company moved out of their basement in January 2006 and only six months later they grew so large they were forced to again relocate. Within just a year, over eight million Jibbitz were purchased worldwide. One day Sheri’s dad took Sheri’s kids to the local pool wearing a pair of Crocs with the attached Jibbitz. Low and behold, the founder of Crocs just happened to be at the pool and he handed the girl a business card. Her daughter ran home and gave the card to her mom Sheri. By December 2006, Crocs bought Jibbitz for $10 million, plus up to another $10 million in bonus. Not bad for a little over a year’s worth of work.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice list of success stories you've got there. It all goes to show that hard work does pay in the end and believing in your "dream" is crucial to any business idea taking off really. Awesome !